Friday, May 15, 2020

Favorite author Erica Bauermeister and friend Christine Hemp share their moving memoirs of a house and a horse.
Erica Bauermeister shares her memoir House Lessons: Renovating a Life. In this mesmerizing memoir-in-essays, Erica Bauermeister renovates a trash-filled house in eccentric Port Townsend, Washington, and in the process takes readers on a journey to discover the ways our spaces subliminally affect us. A personal, accessible, and literary exploration of the psychology of architecture, as well as a loving tribute to the connections we forge with the homes we care for and live in, this book is designed for anyone who’s ever fallen head over heels for a house. It is also a story of a marriage, of family, and of the kind of roots that settle deep into your heart. Discover what happens when a house has its own lessons to teach in this moving and insightful memoir that ultimately shows us how to make our own homes (and lives) better.
“One part investigation of architecture and design, one part exploration of identity, House Lessons is a meditation on space and home, and Bauermeister is a Zen master of the self.”
–Adrienne Brodeur, author of Wild Game
Erica Bauermeister is the bestselling author of four novels, including The School of Essential Ingredients and The Scent Keeper, a Reese's Book Club pick. Her work has been translated into 25 different languages.
Christine Hemp shares her memoir Wild Ride Home: Love, Loss, and a Little White Horse. Told with humor and brilliant irony, this amazingly joyous memoir illuminates the beautiful absurdity of life. Wild Ride Home is a brilliant memoir, looping themes of finding love and losing love, of going away and coming home, of the wretched course of Alzheimer's, of cancer, of lost pregnancies, of fly fishing and horsemanship, of second chances, and, ultimately, of the triumph of love and family--all told within the framework of the training of a little white horse named Buddy. Wild Ride Home invites the reader into the close Hemp family, which believes beauty and humor outshine the most devastating circumstances. A memoir that is, despite devastating loss, above all, an ode to joy.
Christine Hemp is an author, poet, musician, and speaker. She has taught at Harvard University, and University of New Mexico, and aired her poems and essays on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition. Her poetry chapbook That Fall was selected for the New Women’s Voices Series at Finishing Line Press.